Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick: review

It would be a mistake not to read this wonderful novel

By Mark Sanderson

11:00AM BST 22 Jun 2011

Cynthia Ozick has been in thrall to Henry James for more than 60 years. In 1950 the girl from the Bronx received an MA from Ohio State University for a thesis titled Parable in the Later Novels of Henry James. Her latest novel, based loosely on The Ambassadors, in its energy and sharp-eyed wit, reads as if it were written by a twentysomething, not an octogenarian doyenne. In other words, Foreign Bodies is far more accessible (and enjoyable) than the Master’s later works.

Bea Nightingale, 48, who teaches Shakespeare to young toughs destined to become grease monkeys or fight in Korea, lives alone in a New York apartment dominated by a grand piano that belonged to her ex-husband, now a big noise in Hollywood.

In the summer of 1952 she receives a letter from her wealthy brother, Marvin – who has kept the family name of Nachtigall even though he has done everything he can to forget his humble origins a shopkeeper’s son – asking her to track down her nephew, Julian, who has gone missing in Paris, and persuade him to come home to California.

Julian turns out to be a lazy, “marshmallow kid” with artistic pretensions. He also turns out to be married to Lili, an older Romanian woman who lost both husband and son in the Second World War. She, at least, has a job helping some of the many other displaced persons who have washed up in the City of Light.

Bea not only fails in her task, but also enables Marvin’s academically gifted daughter, Iris, to join her brother. Everyone appears desperate to escape Marvin, “a virtuoso of self-interest”. Even his half-mad wife, Margaret, who comes from old money, has checked herself into a clinic.

Foreign Bodies tells a tale of “children gone wrong, life gone wrong, love traduced [and] hope rotted”. Bea’s meddling in these awful people’s lives leads to tragedy. She acts out of a mixture of boredom and despair but her desire for revenge after years of neglect is laced with kindness.

Ozick is not in the business of providing easy answers. She deals in big themes – not the least of which is anti-Semitism – yet uses a playful style to explore them. To echo the most famous line in The Ambassadors (“Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to”): read this wonderful novel; it would be a mistake not to.